


Two Sleepy People

by shiroiori



Category: Homestuck
Genre: JohnDave Week, JohnDave Week 2018, M/M, MCUstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-04 23:58:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15158009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiroiori/pseuds/shiroiori
Summary: ...by dawn's early light / and too much in love to say goodnight. - Two Sleepy People, Fats WallerRecovery is slow and a new age is jarring, but John relishes in the small things.





	Two Sleepy People

They always came back to Brooklyn.

It wasn't that John couldn't stay away--even chasing ghosts, he wasn't that helpless in the face of his emotions. He just knew Brooklyn, knew it well, and there was comfort to be found in familiarity. Now that Dave was back in his life--miraculously, incredibly okay--it almost felt like old times. Couch cushions on the floor, lights low, it felt sometimes like they were back in their old, shitty apartment, with Mrs. Jones upstairs stomping dirt down from the ceiling.

And then Dave would shift, and the gleam of his arm would slam John back into the present.

The first several months had been stormy. Dave would come to the door and be gone the next morning. John would get too comfortable and push too far with sometimes something as small as a finger against Dave's wrist and he would stand, tersely thank John for his hospitality, and walk right out the door.

John had learned to be patient. He'd had to--he'd rather sacrifice his own arm than lose Dave again, not after he'd spent so long still mourning him and their friends. Having Dave back wasn't a fix-all, but it was better than closure could've ever been.

Overnight stays had begun to stretch into weeks which turned to months, and Dave had finally brought in a single bag of belongings and semi-permanently set up shop in John's spare room. "I'm never going to be the same," Dave had warned him once, the words whispered into the rim of a coffee cup. "You have to know that, right?"

John had smiled, gently taken the cup for refilling, and brought it back to curl Dave's fingers around it again. Dave flinched as John touched his metal hand, but John hadn't hesitated. "I know," he replied, voice soft. "I don't want you to be the same. I just want you to be safe, and to be close." Dave had relaxed a bit, pressed against the arm of the couch, and John had counted it as a victory.

He still drew, John found. Any instant they weren't being hounded by reporters, Dave would slip out and return with a new sketchbook and a pack of granite pencils, and a breath John didn't realize he'd been holding would slowly be exhaled. If Dave noticed how he relaxed, he never said a word.

Sometimes, he let John watch. He'd alternate back and forth, right hand, left hand. He'd draw scenery or the cold insides of buildings or, if John was incredibly lucky, Dave would draw a memory. His sisters, or his mother, or John's father. Occasionally one of the Howling Commandos. Rarely--very, very rarely--he would draw John before the serum. Small and smudgy and very, very ill, and Dave would draw him with all the care of one capturing something holy.

"Why then?" John had asked once. "Why draw me so sick?"

"I remember the most of you then," Dave replied. "I remember your asthma cigarettes, and your ugly pajamas, and how you'd get fevers. I don't remember as much of the war. I didn't know war--I knew you." John had excused himself, choked up, and when he returned an hour later, Dave was asleep at his desk, drooling all over his flesh arm.

Things weren't by any means easy, but their days were getting better. John would leave for work and come home to Dave glued to the television, wide-eyed as he watched How It's Made. He'd go to grab them takeout and walk through the front door to find Dave poking around their records, a song in the air. He'd brought Kanaya and Jake over once to find Dave at the stove, gently spooning sugar and cinnamon into cored apples, and had needed to turn around and walk back out into the apartment hallway so he wouldn't burst into tears.

"You could've made those a million times easier," Jake had teased as he sat at the counter. "Feel honored," Dave had replied. "This was a rare treat back in my day."

And now Dave was sitting on the windowsill, staring out over the skyline. The night wind ruffled his clothes, and John's fingers itched to push his hair from his face--still long, pulled back in a careless ponytail, strands slipping loose, too silky soft to stay.

Instead, John just sat on the other end of the windowsill, watching Dave watch the world. "You okay?" he asked after several moments. Dave grabbed his hand without a thought, squeezing firmly. "I'm fine, John," he laughed, and John's chest went warm and tight. "I really am, today, I promise. Come here."

Touch had been a learning experience. Dave's shoulder was a yes--his neck was a no. John could reach over to squeeze his knee fondly, but a hand on the small of Dave's back would land John on his back, gaping like a fish as Dave pinned him to the floor, frightened. His face, thankfully, was an okay place to touch, and John skimmed the fingers of his free hand along Dave's cheek gently as he moved to finally push back the loose strands of hair around Dave's face.

"You should just hack all of this off if you're not going to take care of it," he told him, and Dave snorted. "You say that, but you'd miss it. You're always touching it."

"To get it out of your face!" John protested, but warmth rose to his face and oh, he was found out. It was Dave's turn to reach his hand up, leaving John's abandoned between them so he could hold John still and kiss him softly. The fight went out of John, bled straight from his skin from the place Dave touched him. Dave pulled away and his brows were drawn, as if the action of pulling away itself had been a task. Despite having not had fatigue issues in literal decades, John felt faint. "Still okay?" he asked.

"Better," Dave replied, and leaned in to kiss him again.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been keeping myself from writing Stucky!JohnDave since CA:TWS came out. You can thank exorciststuck for convincing me to do it anyway.


End file.
